Last January we went from five board goals to three board goals. This was part of a decade long refining process to strategically build and execute a cohesive vision for the entire district.
While the movement from five to three board goals might not have sounded like a monumental shift in the district, it highlighted the culmination of a very exciting time for the entire Coronado Unified School District. Believe it or not, at one point we had over thirty goals.
In 2001, as a part of the No Child Left Behind initiative, the state of California required all education agencies to complete a Local Educational Agency Plan (LEAs). In Coronado, we embraced the requirements as an incredible opportunity to outline goals and make strategic measures within the school district.
We were so zealous about creating our LEA plans—which we called our Strategic Plan—that we had an individual plan for every single school as well as the district.
These individual and unique plans ended up creating silos throughout the district. Ultimately goals and visions didn’t align.
About six years ago, we began an intensive process to unify the district’s goals.
We brought together the school district board with school and community stakeholders to remove any divisiveness, and create a cohesive vision. This consisted of revising the whole strategic planning process and timelines across the district.
In short, it was a very large undertaking.
The result of the first district-wide set of board goals was thirty-six different goals. Yes, you read that correctly. We had thirty-six goals.
Looking back, that was far too many. The initial focus of these goals was too granular. Additionally, they didn’t provide an even arch over k-12 education. That being said, this was an important first step in bringing all the schools and the district together.
We used this starting position as a launching point to start refining the board goals from granular and site-specific, to all encompassing and holistic. The result of this refinement, which represented the hard work of many invested stakeholders, created five CUSD board goals. They encompassed all the schools and helped define the path forward for the district as a whole.
These goals were something to be proud of as a district. They covered learning, fiscal measures, communication, character education, and finally instruction and assessment.
We had these goals for five years.
Last January, the school board decided that it was time to evaluate our board goals again. The board put aside the current goals and worked within the community to define the essence of learning and examine the most important aspects of education. We brought together an extensive group of stakeholders, including community members, parents, students, teachers, district administrators, and more. Together, we created an authentic and organic process to wrestle with these essential questions.
The process itself was incredible. To see all parts of the community come together to capture what encapsulates education was inspiring.
The result was even more exciting.
We created three visionary, overarching goals to help us move the entire district forward as a whole:
Learning
Integrate personalized learning with assessment methods that will prepare all students for academic and vocational success.
Communication
Communicate openly, freely, and accurately to engage and involve all shareholders.
Support
Maintain safe and supportive schools where students and staff can thrive.
Even more, we went back to each individual school to work with them to define school-specific plans that connected to the bigger goals. This included creating action steps, defining who would be involved, identifying needed funding, outlining resources, and establishing measurable milestones to evaluate against.
Through all these goals, we created a strategy to continue to achieve and foster the best learning environment for our children.
In the first three months of 2016, we will be taking an in-depth look at each of our new goals. Through this process, we will outline why we believe these goals truly do encapsulate the essence of education while simultaneously creating a roadmap to move our district into the future.
